The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Access controls may be used to regulate who has permission to access certain resources, such as information, land, personal property, money, or any other item of value. However, vulnerabilities in access controls may develop or be discovered. Such vulnerabilities may be remedied by replacing the access controls, but this can be a costly and time-consuming process. Furthermore, until the access controls are replaced, resources may be unavailable, even to people who have a right to access them.
Attempts to reduce the expense of replacing access controls have typically been focused on limiting the scope of access controls. For example, resources may be compartmentalized into accounts that are each associated with a separate access control. Thus, if one account is compromised, the other accounts remain unaffected. However, limiting the scope of access controls does not change the fact that when an account is compromised, replacing the associated access controls is still a costly and time-consuming process that renders resources temporarily inaccessible.
Digitizing access controls has also had some effect in reducing the amount of time and money typically involved in replacing access controls. For example, instead of replacing the entire infrastructure associated with a mechanical access control, replacing a digital access control may involve replacing or reprogramming affected components of the infrastructure. Nevertheless, the downtime and costs associated with replacing even digital access controls may still be significant.
Thus, an approach for further reducing the downtime associated with replacing access controls would improve the usability and effectiveness of access control technology.
While each of the figures illustrates a particular embodiment for purposes of depicting a clear example, other embodiments may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the elements shown in the drawing figures. For purposes of depicting clear examples, one or more figures may be described with reference to one or more other figures, but using the particular arrangement depicted in the one or more other figures is not required in other embodiments.